1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of electrostatic spraying of dry powders and particularly relates to electrodes for dry powder misters used in printing presses.
2. Prior Art
Printing presses of the sheet-fed type which rapidly discharge printed sheets into a stack have been equipped with sprayers or misters forming a cloud of dry dielectric powder in the path of the discharging freshly printed sheets to prevent the sheets from sticking together and smudging of the ink. These sprayers or misters have required a gas filled fluorescent light glass tube conventionally known as a neon fluorescent light. These neon light glass tubes were energized with a high voltage current creating an electrostatic field across the path of dry dielectric powder as it descends from a supply source. The tubes were fragile, had a very short life, quickly breaking down under the high voltage and creating an arcing short circuit.
It would therefore be an improvement in this art to replace the neon glass tube electrodes with gas free unbreakable electrodes which do not break, wear or burn out.